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need to be deterred from acting as they had under the old regime.
    So there is no either–or. Both to remember and to forget are intrinsic to the law. Law requires perpetrators to be answerable for their guilt; their punishment is a signal showing that something like that must not happen again, and that it will not be accepted but actively opposed. Simultaneously, after a certain amount of time has passed, the law calls for past events to be brought to conclusion and let go. The rule of law also demands closure and settlement if an act was legal at the time it was committed.
    The law’s ability to be moulded into opposing functions to support the social task of remembering and forgetting is not merely instrumental. However the law is instrumentalised – it shows one of its true functions. Also, it brings the law into conflict with its opposing function. Coming to terms with both the national socialist and communist German past through law created legal conflicts concerning the statute of limitations and the prohibition against retroactive punishment. The time granted under the statute of limitations for prosecution and adjudication of national socialist and communist offences had run out or was about to run out, and, moreover, under the prohibition against retroactive punishment the defendants could only be prosecuted and sentenced if their acts had already been criminal offences at the time.
    When the statute of limitations threatened to run out in the sixties and seventies for national socialist offences, and in the nineties for communist ones, extending or suspending the not-yet-expired period of limitations averted the deadlines. Some German legal scholars expressed concern about making such changes in the law governing the statute of limitations. They argued that the prohibition against retroactive punishment would be violated. But the Federal Constitutional Court accepted the extension or suspension of the statutes of limitation that were to expire as in accordance with the constitution. Indeed, there is a lot to be said for punishable acts being defined in law before the deed so that the definition of the crime includes the elements of the offence and its punitive sanctions, but not the duration of the possibility of criminal prosecution. Citizens should feel secure and know which of their behaviours and omissions are punishable and how they will be punished, but they do not have the same need to know how long after the crime the administration of justice will still prosecute them. This also corresponds to the principle of guilt: a citizen does not bring guilt upon themself if they consider their behaviour not to be punishable and, in view of existing law, can believe so in good faith; but they are no less guilty solely because after a set date ensured by law their punishable behaviour will no longer be prosecuted.
    More problematic by far under the rule of law is the prosecution and adjudication of national socialist and communist offences that, without a doubt, would never have been prosecuted or punished in the Third Reich or in the GDR. The perpetrator assumed at the time that their behaviour was not punishable, and they could reasonably do so in view of then-existing law. In the Third Reich, when soldiers had murdered Jews without a command to do so and were called into account for their actions before the law, it was for failing to follow the military code and expressly not because of killing Jews; even though murder was, of course, punishable, for soldiers there was an exception and justification for killing Jews. In the GDR, when an attempted illegal border crossing was prevented by firing lethal shots it was justified by the border law of the time and was not only not punished, but praised and rewarded.
    The Federal Republic of Germany enshrined in its constitution the prohibition against retroactive punishment, in direct opposition to the statute of the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg and